News

Predicting Liver Disease

Published on
January 30th, 2018

SSS epidemiologist Constance Ruhl is the coauthor of an article in Hepatology that describes an examination of over 14,000 viral hepatitis–negative adult participants in the third National Health and Nutrition Examination Surveys (1988–1994) to determine whether common clinical measures of fibrosis risk (known as liver fibrosis scores) were associated with increased mortality. Fatty liver disease is common in the United States and worldwide due to changing lifestyles and can progress to fibrosis and cirrhosis and contribute to premature death. In the U.S. population, higher liver fibrosis scores were associated with increased liver disease and overall mortality. The authors concluded that liver health management using such scores merits further investigation. The article was coauthored by a researcher from the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases.